Interview with Anthony M. DeStefano 2

Anthony M. Stefano, author of "Broadway Butterfly: Vivian Gordon: The Lady Gangster of Jazz Age New York"

Anthony M. Stefano's Website

Anthony M. DeStefano has covered organized crime for over three decades. For the past 20 years he has been a reporter for Newsday in New York City, specializing in criminal justice and legal affairs. (The reference to Newsday is for identification only and the newspaper has no connection to this website.)

As part of the staff of Newsday, Mr. DeStefano has covered a number of major trials, including those of subway gunman Bernhard Goetz (1987), The Happy Land Social Club Fire (1991), reputed Gambino crime boss Peter Gotti (2003), former Bonanno crime boss Joseph Massino (2004) and the so called “Mafia Cops” (2006). He also covered the case against Wall Street Ponzi schemer Bernard Madoff from 2008 through 2014.

As a result of his coverage of the Massino trial, DeStefano has written the book “The Last Godfather: Joseph Massino and The Fall of The Bonanno Crime Family” (Citadel Press) which is now available in books stores such as Barnes and Nobles and online.

DeStefano’s continuing coverage of the Mafia led to two additional books: “Mob Killer: The Bloody Rampage of Charlie Carneglia, Mafia Hit Man” (June 2011) and “Vinny Gorgeous: The Ugly Rise And Fall Of A New York Mobster (July 2013). His coverage of human trafficking inspired another book, “The War On Human Trafficking.” All the books are available at books stores and online.

The definitive book on one of the most notorious murders in Jazz Age New York history, that of Vivian Gordon, the high-end escort, con artist, and blackmailer connected to gangsters like “Legs” Diamond and Arnold Rothstein, whose death exposed the dark underbelly of police corruption throughout the city—from the Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist who is one of the foremost Mafia experts writing today.

Like so many other pretty butterflies, Indiana-born Vivian Gordon fluttered to New York in 1920 looking for fame and fortune. Before long, the flame-haired chorus girl parlayed her youth, beauty, and ambition into more profitable means as a tough and glamorous symbol of Prohibition-era excess. She was a speakeasy owner, blackmailer, high-end escort, extortionist, racketeer, and con woman. But given her dangerously intimate associations—from ruthless underworld gangsters to corrupt high-ranking city officials—Vivian was also a woman who knew too much and who rightfully feared for her life.

On February 26, 1931, Vivian’s bludgeoned and garroted body was found dumped in Van Cortland Park in the Bronx. Now, in the first in-depth biography of its kind, Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award-winning journalist Anthony M. DeStefano unravels her tumultuous life and the headline-making murder that became an obsession for many, including then-Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

The evidence Vivian left behind was damning: a diary with more than three-hundred names implicating powerful officials, philanthropists, businessmen, and every major gangland figure in collusion and corruption. The investigation eventually resulted in the career-ending investigation of James “Jimmy” Walker, disgraced mayor of New York City.

Ultimately, Broadway Butterfly finally finds a place in history for Vivian, a woman with a rare legacy in gangster lore, whose demise was as tragically inevitable as the brutality of the city’s demimondeduring Prohibition.

Michael Carter, Co-Host

Michael Carter's Website